Fishing lures have appeared on the market that may be steered in either a left or a right direction as a fisherman, or “angler”, pulls on the line to which the fishing lure is attached. These lures have been developed in response to an angler's desire to direct the lure to locations where fish tend to congregate, such as around trees, tree stumps, docks, rocks, or anything where they can hide to ambush prey and stay away from currents. A drawback to many of these lures, however, is that their direction change set is limited to only two directions, (i.e., left-to-right or right-to-left) or to small segments simulating constant erratic behavior with no detailed or real control by the angler while the lure is in the water.
As shown FIGS. 1A to 1C, with the direction of retrieval being from the top of the page toward the bottom of the page, a prior art lure can be retrieved in a “locally erratic” but overall straight line in the direction of retrieval (shown by the arrows in FIGS. 1A and 1B) or at alternating right or left straight line segments at an angle to the direction of retrieval (shown by the arrows in FIG. 1C) but not at a zero angle, that is, in a straightforward fashion. These prior art steerable lures are also limiting in the fact that the steerability attribute in segments of controlled length cannot be imparted, thereby reducing the effectiveness of such lures.
Furthermore, these prior art steerable lures require the line tie to stop retrieval long enough for gravitational force to effect the change in the configuration of the lure which do not allow for total reliability in the desired outcome of the direction change attempt. In other lures, while the direction of the lure may be changed if the lure is pre-adjusted prior to casting, the lure will travel at a fixed angle. Once the lure is in the water moving in one direction, ie. right the angler cannot change direction to straight ahead or to the left and therefore the lure in reality is set but not being controlled by the angler.
The need exists today for a lure that gives the angler the ability to select the direction in which the lure moves while the lure is in the water by more than two segment directions and by lengths that can be controlled by the angler at will as the lure is being dragged through the water by such angler. Furthermore the need exists for means that can confer such steerability to commercial existing lure designs without radically altering or compromising the original design integrity of such lures.